Making sure you get the best data

Finding a company to provide data services has never been easier. There are dozens of them, all just waiting to provide you with consumer data. Neustar, Acxiom, Infogroup, etc. But some of these companies try very hard to sell customers data that they don’t want, that they don’t need, and they can’t even use.

“Philip” runs a computer shop in Pennsylvania. He is trying to get a bit more foot traffic into his brick-and-mortar store, so he decides to send out some direct mail, or perhaps try to target some online advertising. In order to do that, he contacts a company that provides consumer data, so that he knows whom he is advertising too.

Unfortunately for Philip, the company he chose lumps data together that he doesn’t necessarily need. Now he has to sieve through a wide range of data about consumers just to find consumer data from the zip codes he cares about and the type of people he cares about. Further, that data probably doesn’t have actionable insights that indicate a prospect is actively looking for computers or related products – meaning they may not even be a prospect at all. And now he has a lot of useless data and doesn’t even know it until he uses it and gets no response – and this is data he spent his hard-earned money on.

The company he bought it from, of course, does not care. They wish to sell as much data as possible, regardless of the custom, personal experience they might be able to provide. And why should they bother providing such an experience? After all, they own more data than they know what to do with and have incentives to sell as much of it as possible.

Luckily, an alternative exists in the form of BDEX. BDEX specializes in providing a subscription model for data collection, allowing customers to buy only the data they want and need and none that they don’t. Philip can purchase data about consumers in Philadelphia that are looking for his products without having the hassle of sifting through information he doesn’t need. More than that, he’s getting more than just the data he would have with a single company. He’s getting access to the data available from many, many companies and sources.

This is because BDEX is partnered with about fifty major data providers, including Neustar, Acxiom, and InfoGroup. Customers using BDEX’s subscription plan get access to all the data these companies have licensed it to use. That means that subscribed customers get access to many of these companies’ benefits without having to build a relationship with them, and without paying for unwanted data – making their purchase truly customizable.

This access allows BDEX to aggregate data from discrete sources, filter them, and organize them in ways meaningful for the client. Ultimately, this piles up to 900 million mobile devices, 1.3 billion email addresses, and 220 million U.S. postal addresses, all part of the vast network providing data. This data is provided via purchase history, mobile apps, websites, supermarket clubs, geofencing, credit card providers, and more. Of course, not every customer needs to use all of this data. They can pick and choose what they want to receive in their subscription.

These fifty major data providers allow BDEX access to data of varying kinds. The core data comes in the form of consumer behavioral data, geofencing, audience intent, and demographic personal data. All of this is mined from sources like those mentioned previously and can be used in all sorts of marketing. These myriad sources provide a diverse quality and quantity of consumer data, ensuring that there is something valuable in it for any business. This turns BDEX into a marketplace where the best data can be selected and purchased.

This diversity of sources also gives a company an advantage against their competition. If every company in the area is using the same source of data, they will all be advertising to the same consumers. However, companies with access to more varied data, from more varied sources – along with actionable, real-time behavioral data that indicates a prospect is ready to buy – can both narrow things down to an efficient list and often target consumers whom others do not have access to.

All of this is readily available in a simple subscription model, without the need to interact with third parties or go through the hassle of sorting through unwanted data – saving you time and money, and vastly boosting the impact of your marketing efforts.

How data insights from BDEX led directly to increased car sales

One of the biggest challenges for businesses is identifying people who are ready to buy their product. This can be especially difficult for companies that still rely on physical stores and showrooms in which customers need to go offline to shop – and this was the dilemma faced by Maher Chevrolet.

Old methods just don’t work anymore

The marketing formula for car dealerships used to be simple: Stock a lot and showroom with shiny vehicles and make sure people passing by can see the low, low prices and beautiful cars. But nowadays, it’s not that easy to attract customers. For one thing, passersby may not even look up from the road or their smartphones. And if they do, they might just do a quick online search to see if, in fact, those low prices aren’t just a little lower somewhere else.

Maher needed a new approach to finding the right customers

A fixture in St. Petersburg, Florida, for more than 30 years, Maher Chevrolet contacted BDEX with one goal in mind: to find new ways to identify customers in their area. This included all channels, both digital and physical.

How BDEX helped Maher identify ideal buyers

Through our Data Exchange Program, BDEX has over 900 billion data signals and more than 700 million device ID connections. This enables us to take real-time data from computers, tablets, smartphones, and other devices and turn it into actionable opportunities for sales. In addition to their online vehicle searches, Maher was able to get other relevant information related to potential customers, including when their car leases were expiring.

The data we offered didn’t just pertain to the online world. Through the use of geofencing, Maher knew when customers visited competing dealerships within a 25-mile radius. Not only did this show exactly who was ready to make a purchase, but this also gave the dealership details about the shopper’s current vehicle, as well as their contact information.

What were the results?

With brand-new insights into the real-time behavior of customers, Maher could stop wasting time on trying to attract just anybody and instead focus on the most promising leads. Over a three-month period, BDEX provided the dealer with hundreds of actionable leads.

As a result, Maher sold 99 cars in three months that were directly related to our data.

Increase your car sales with actionable data from BDEX

While your dealership may take pride in its lot full of gleaming vehicles, the best way to find people who want to buy them is through the smart use of actionable, real-time data. To learn what BDEX can do for you, contact us.

How BDEX’s Platform as a Service helps you easily monetize your customer data

Managing data can be complex. If you are trying to monetize data you’ve gathered, or just keep it organized when it comes in from discrete sources, it can take hours of work just to synthesize it in a usable and meaningful way. And even then, every bit of it has to be tailored to suit the formats of the various platforms on which data can be monetized.

Data is a major business and an extremely valuable commodity that some are willing to pay good money for. So, when companies collect data and lack a way to properly monetize it, they are basically sitting on a deposit of gold with no equipment to mine it.

For example, a food delivery service could collect a good deal of information about their customers: spending habits, location, and the best contact methods. Unless that business is monetizing its data, however, it is not properly leveraging a potential revenue stream.

Unfortunately, many companies do not have the internal infrastructure needed to organize and monetize their data. It can be a challenge to track information, gather it from across networks and services, make it uniform if derived from different systems, and then present it in a way that can earn revenue. In fact, data is often only used profitably by many companies through their own marketing efforts or to enhance products and services, as selling to other companies can be somewhat complex.

You need a platform to organize and monetize your data

One way to meet this need is through the creation of a unique platform for data monetization. Companies gathering large amounts of data can hire developers to build a platform capable of sustaining the kind of data collection they want, one that then formats and sorts it for monetization. Unfortunately, as they gather more data, the platform necessarily becomes larger and more robust, requiring more effort and tools to maintain it. The data must also be tailored to the individual platforms that purchase it. This can get rather expensive.

This is where BDEX’s platform for data collecting and monetization comes in. Our Platform as a Service (PaaS), available to companies of all sizes and specialties, is built around managing data in such a way that marketing, as well as monetization, become easier and more efficient. Rather than trying to design an in-house solution that deals with the various formats and qualities of data (taken indirectly and/or and from third parties), BDEX is able to synthesize this data into an easy-to-use format.

To monetize data, it is typically sold to common third-party data buyers. Each of these entities requires customers to organize it and format it in a certain way. Data sellers must conform to each distinct set of parameters, including how often you can update the data and how it looks.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) simplifies this process. It already has all the functionality one could want in a platform that is custom-designed to monetize data. It can capture information in real time, manage that data in an efficient and organized way, and even transmit it to third parties – preformatted for specific data buyers. It interfaces with all kinds of data collection and purchasing systems, including those set up for mobile devices. All of the data you collect is entered automatically into the system and can be quickly plugged into external systems such as LiveRamp.

One of its features is its ability to authenticate duplicated data. If data is collected for the same user more than once on different sources, those occurrences will be used to verify the information and then gathered into a single identity to avoid unnecessary redundancy.

This system allows companies to take complete control of their data, keeping it organized and monetized as a way to gain passive revenue. No programmers or database developers required.

Like most BDEXservices, this is a subscription model available to all sorts of companies for a monthly fee. To learn more, contact us.

Only get the targeted marketing data you need, when you need it

One of the elements of successful marketing is knowing your audience. Whether you’re trying to sell a phone or a shower curtain, knowing which people are potential customers is essential. Otherwise, you’re unlikely to sell anything at all.

Buying data, then, is an essential part of the process of finding customers. Through this information, companies can learn what consumers are buying, how much they are paying, where they are making their purchases, and how likely they are to repeat them. Unfortunately, many data brokers are more concerned with the quantity than the quality of the data they provide.

One of the largest problems that come from working with such great quantities is that data becomes too broad to actually be useful. Let’s say, for example, that a customer fits a demographic and predictive profile of people who are likely to buy a home, based on past data that shows 10% of that group with similar characteristics will be in the market. That means, at best, 90% of the dollars spent on marketing to the group will be wasted.

Many data firms, however, are going to give companies that big, non-specific list based on predictive data. It will likely target and reach some people who are interested in buying a house, but at what cost? In a traditional data licensing agreement, it’s all or nothing; companies pay to license the entire file.

Many data companies may not care if their clients are only looking for data about specific demographics or regions, forcing them to pay for data they cannot even use. A home appliance company that only serves Florida does not need information about Maine, after all. And a law firm that specializes in divorce does not need information about teenagers. But the complete dataset purchased from some data brokers will have all of that information, which then needs to be whittled down in-house, creating an additional expense in the form of the expertise and man-hours needed to manage the data.

In a subscription model that involves real-time data, the client only receives the consumer information that they want, when they want it. If a company is only interested in people who live or work in downtown Pittsburgh who are actively shopping for a home online or in-person, that’s the information that a subscription will provide. Gone is the need to sieve aimlessly through a thousand faceless names, trying to poke and prod until you find information that can be used for marketing.

Take a look at a specific example: Let’s say a marketer wants to identify and reach out to people who collect antiques. With BDEX’s geofencing capability, a marketer can actually see that a collector has spent time at a brick-and-mortar antique store. Thanks to online behavioral date, they can also see that he’s been visiting eBay and antique websites online. These elements are fused with specific variables (say, home address and potentially many other factors) and the marketer receives a customized list of only the names of these highly-specific targets – individuals who are actively looking to buy collectibles in a geographic area, all the way down to the specific zip codes.

That list may only be 10 people a month, based on the parameters.

With a standard data company, a marketer might instead buy a list of people in the antiquing demographic, and it would take hours to sort the relevant elements and find a way to advertise to collectors … along with a bunch of people who aren’t collectors. A subscription model eliminates these inefficiencies. Your company can advertise to consumers more efficiently than its competitors, and get your customer those antiques (or cars, homes, furnishings, etc.) even more quickly.

Additionally, a subscription model may help you find customers that other models are not even able to detect. If everyone is using the same data collecting techniques, then all of your competitors will end up advertising to the same people, whether or not it is effective. The data gets stale and overused and suddenly people are seeing ten ads a day for sinks they already bought, which is a massive waste of money. A subscription, on the other hand, allows marketers access to consumers that traditional models might not pick up – those whom are looking to buy now.

All of this serves to make a subscription model more competitive in a changing marketplace. Subscriptions allow businesses to adapt on the fly without having to sort through gigabytes of useless information, giving them the edge they need to market successfully.

To start making a highly-specific data subscription model work for your marketing campaigns, call us at 917-410-6616 or send an email to info@bdex.com.